Glimpses of Grace
II Corinthians 12:7-10 & I Samuel 4-6
Baltimore Area Men’s Rally
March 3, 2002
I live in Staten Island–which is a Borough of New York City, but I live in a unique part of NYC, probably unlike any other part of the world. It is called Travis. People ask me what is Travis like, I say it is the Mayberry of New York City. Travis is bordered on the West by the Arthur Kill–which constitutes the border between SI and NJ. On North by Wetlands and thinly spread out industry. On the South by the Fresh Kills Landfill–it may ring a bell because that is where the debris from the WTC attack is being sifted for evidence and human remains. Consequently, Travis is still relatively isolated, though we have to fight the developers to keep it that way. Anyway, Travis still has a small town feel to it.
There is a gentleman who lives in my town by the name of Ed. He doesn’t attend my church, but I see him fairly regularly at different events. When I do, he usually gives me an earful. I listen because there is not anything else I can do. Let me tell you what he tells me virtually every time I see him. We used to talk about his mother, who was well into her 90s when she died about two years ago. Ed took care of her. She wanted to be independent, so he let her live in her own home until she died. He made sure she was fed and warm. It was a lot of effort, but it is what you might expect from a loving son.
He also tells me about his grandson whom he takes care of. When he was a baby, they took him for his shots. They got home and he was running a bit of a fever. He didn’t think anything of it–not unusual after shots–so he went to bed. He couldn’t sleep that night because of strange dreams he was having. Finally, he got up and checked on his grandson. He was running an extremely high fever. Immediately, they began to work to get the fever down, but it was too late. He was permanently brain damaged. One of the idiosyncracies that came out of that damage was an uncontrollable habit to put things in his mouth–including dirt and pebbles. Usually that is not too bad, but after a while his condition got worse and they discovered an extremely high level of lead in his blood. It came from his own backyard. The pebbles and dirt he put into his mouth were slowly poisoning him. That grandson becomes less and less responsive and more and more difficult to control every year. His mother is no help because she is a resident in a mental facility, so Ed takes care of him the best he can.
Then Ed tells me about his son. His son had an accident several years ago–I think a diving accident–it left him a quadriplegic. He provides care for all of these people. I ask Ed, “How do you keep going?” He says the little amount of faith he has keeps him going. “What about your wife?” “She is an atheist. She used to believe, but after everything she cannot any longer.” That is what hardship does. It divides us because we have to choose. We choose whether to believe in God or abandon our belief in God. On September 11th each of us to a greater or lesser extent entered Ed Fanuzzi’s world. We are, many of us to this day, still making that choice. The choice between belief and abandonment. Let’s talk about that choice tonight because it is a choice that each of us is or will become familiar with throughout the course of our lives.
We are forced to make the choice when we are stricken by unforseen tragedy. Those events lead a person to re-evaluate himself, his beliefs, the things he bases his life on, often he will do that based on some very fundamental questions. One question we have to come to grips with is “What does this mean?” I imagine everybody, whether in the ministry or not has had this question asked, “What does this mean?” We have heard that question many times in response to the attacks of September 11th. What do you say to that? Our inclination as believers is to turn to the Bible–a good inclination. We might turn to Matthew 24 and say that events such as the attack on WTC are a sign that Jesus is coming. You could say that, but I think you would be wrong. Not about Jesus’ coming, and its imminence. I believe in that, but not any more than I did on September 10th. At the very least you are going to have to explain to me why the events of Sept. 11th mean more than the 1900 flood in Galveston, or the Great Chicago Fire, or the Earthquake in San Francisco in 1986. Each of these is a sign that things are not right in the world. In my faith, I know that one day they will be made right, so everyday’s difficulties should cause me to turn to heaven and echo the Apostle John, “Come quickly Lord Jesus.” But if you are going to give me a reason for something to happen it has got to be better than that. I already believed Jesus will come back. And I am not sure I am pleased with a god who has to kill mothers and fathers to try to teach hard-hearted people a lesson. For most of us, giving some sort of apocalyptic interpretation to events doesn’t help much.
We could say that God is removing his covering from us as a nation because of our sinful lifestyles. You could say that if you wanted to be another voice in the long line of voices who have spoken in the legacy of Job’s friends.
Honestly I don’t know what to tell someone who asks the question, “What does this mean?” But I am willing to listen to someone who reinterprets their own tragedy through the eyes of faith. I heard a chaplain tell about someone who did just that. The buildings had fallen. He was milling around the area where the WTC complex once stood. She stopped him, “What does this mean?” He had a great response. He asked, “What does it mean to you?” She said, “All my values have come crashing down.” “Is that right? Now what?” “I need a new set of values.” Let me tell you something men, that is a door through which the gospel can come in and stay in someone’s heart. So many people have put their trust in things, or in ideas, or in glorious, glass buildings. Now they are rethinking that trust.
The question we have to ask then is “Whom will I trust?” When your world has fallen down, who will you believe in? Who are you going to trust?
I had a strange reaction to the falling down of the towers. On a clear day you could see the Towers from the highway we travel on to get to our house. We were out of the city that week and coming in on the 12th we looked up to where we used to see the Towers. You know what we saw–the same thing could be seen even from outer space–a plume of smoke rising in the sky. A while later I drove to a point on Staten Island where we have a good view of the city. My reaction was how unimpressive the skyline now is. I began to mourn for the very buildings. I suppose there are a lot of psychological explanations for that, but I had to check myself to make sure I wasn’t mourning for some of the things the buildings represented. Was I mourning for the economic strength of our country? Was I grieving the blow to the power of men to create something so big? Was I simply upset about the loss of prestige the loss of the buildings gave to our city and our nation?
I was very concerned that these things were going through my thought process. It concerned be because it exposed a part of me I had convinced myself didn’t exist. There is a part of me that trusts in the things of this life instead of the creator of this world. I should trust God. That is a lesson worth taking from such a horrific situation.
The question begs itself: “How do we trust in God when something so horrific has taken place?” It is easy to say I should trust God, but what is the empirical evidence for trusting him? If you get food poisoning from the food of a nice restaurant, you aren’t going to invite the chef to cater your daughter’s wedding. If the bus driver runs the bus on the curb when he stops for you, you might think twice about getting on his bus. When your world is falling apart, why should you trust more in the creator? That is a legitimate question. Don’t be afraid to ask that question. Don’t be afraid to ask God that question. He has the answer. I don’t really have the answer, but I do get some insight from Paul’s words in II Corinthians. In the midst of talking about the great things God has done for and through him, Paul brings up what he calls a thorn in the flesh. “To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
“When I am weak, then I am strong.” It is like many of the other paradoxes that come up throughout the Bible. First shall be last. Poor will be rich. You’ve got to lose your life in order to save it. God speaks to us in paradoxes a lot. Here Paul writes “When I am weak, then I am strong.” That strength comes from the sufficient grace given by God. What is the grace that makes us strong? There is saving grace of course. That is the grace that God has given us through the blood of Jesus. We are made holy. We are pure in God’s sight because of his grace. Salvation is definitely a glimpse of grace we need to recognize. Sometimes that doesn’t give us the comfort that it should in the midst of disaster. It is not always helpful for instance to tell someone who has lost a dear loved one that they are in heaven. There comes a point when it is comforting, but that is not usually in the beginning.
Grace is not limited to salvation. It refers to any good thing that comes from the Father. Think of grace as God’s expression of himself in our lives. God will not be fully revealed to us until Christ comes again, but we can catch glimpses of grace today. They are manifestations of God’s presence in the midst of our suffering. Let me tell you about a few glimpses of grace that I am aware of in the context of the attacks of September–especially the WTC attacks.
I am aware of a lot of people who were not where they were supposed to be on that day. Since they were supposed to be in the Trade Center, it was a glimpse of grace that they were not there.
Connie, a woman in my congregation worked in a nearby building and she should have been in a Path Train underneath the Trade Center or walking to her office during the time the planes hit and the buildings burned and fell. She was running late for some reason, and instead of being in Lower Manhattan, she was in a train stopped in New Jersey.
The stopping of the Path Trains was a blessing in and of itself. Each train carries many people to the station under the WTC. A dispatcher, without any real authority to do so stopped them as soon as the first plane hit. She didn’t even have any idea at that point that the city was under attack. She just had heard that there was an incident at the Trade Center.
The daughter of a man in my congregation had an appointment with her toddler son in the Trade Center. At 9:15 that morning. Her husband forgot to give her the message. She never knew about the appointment! Remember that story husbands. It might be a good example for you to use in the next argument with your wife.
Don’t fall into the trap of saying that these events and others like them were coincidence. They are glimpses of grace. They prompt us to turn from the evil and destruction of this life to the goodness and hope of God. I am not talking about raising the dead, feeding the 5,000 or healing the blind. I am talking about moments of magnificence missed by the multitudes. God breaks into this broken and sinful world and creates pockets of wholeness. God pierces the darkness with rays of His light. Don’t take that away from Him.
Let me tell you about one more glimpse of grace. Boris is a cobbler–a shoe repairman–on Greenwich street. He is literally across the street from building 7. He was shut down for 2 months following the attack. Since re-opening he has struggled to make a living. Tourists don’t normally want their shoes repaired. Tourists is all that is left since the buildings fell. Myself and another two other preachers visited Boris and offered a little bit of assistance. We talked to him for quite a while. He showed us bag of shoes. They were left before September 11th, he said, but no one comes to pick them up. They were like the many cars in commuter lots on S.I. and around the region. They would never be picked up. I got to thinking about Boris. He like so many other small business men in the region are torn. A business man like Boris would get to know his customers. The same people would come in on a regular basis with shoes to be fixed. Now they will not come back. Some are dead. Others are just never coming to the city again. Others have found new jobs, or their jobs have been moved. Boris is torn between grieving for his customers some of whom have probably died, though he will never know for sure, and grieving for his business which is barely solvent. He doesn’t know where to turn, but he is getting an idea.
He told us he was born in Russia–old Russia he said. Atheism was the way of life he learned. They were not taught about God. They were not to talk about God. That day, as he ran away from the falling buildings he began to think, and he has been thinking since then that maybe there is a God. Here is a man with no spiritual or religious foundation whatsoever. Yet he is thinking about God. Why is that? Perhaps in the midst of the carnage of the attack, he got a glimpse of grace. We prayed together that day and I have spoken to him a time or two since then. He is still searching. I am still praying that God gives him and me more glimpses of grace.
During the horrific days that followed the collapse of the buildings in the World Trade Center men and women were working diligently and it seemed that there were very few glimpses of grace. They were called “rescue and recovery workers,” but there was very little rescuing going on. People were breathing air that was thick with particulates of which we are only beginning to understand the long-term ramifications. Those workers were working 12-15 hr shifts 7 days a week during that first week or so. A chaplain who had come from Texas heard the rough accent of a Bronx Firefighter. “Chaplain, Chaplain, get down here. I want you to see this. Tell me if I am going crazy or not.” The firefighter took the chaplain into the hole where they were working. There it was. You may have seen it yourself on TV or in the print media. The steel, in the process of the destruction of the building had formed a cross. A perfectly proportioned cross. Some kind of building material was draped over it the way you would a cross during this time of year. The chaplain was overwhelmed. He immediately began calling every person he could find to show them the cross at Ground Zero.
Today that cross is lifted high above the rubble on a newly built pedestal. It overlooks the destruction and carnage and gives us a glimpse of grace. It reminds me that there is nothing there that God has not seen before. The week after the 11th I was in the deli across the street from my house. It is owned by an Italian family. The dad makes the pies. The daughter runs the register. One brother takes care of the Deli. One does the delivery. One kind of manages the whole thing. Watching it all happen is mom. She barely speaks English. I am sure she is Catholic, but we were talking about the events of the week. At that time, both the hope and the fear was that there were people alive, buried underneath the rubble. We were talking about how terrible that would be. Then she said something I will never forget. It was one of those classic moments when the Minister is ministered unto. She said, “God knows what we are going through. After all, he watched while His son died on the cross.” That is what I think about when I see that Steel Cross hovering over the rubble. I think about how the greatest victory of all was won on a cross. I think about how the Father stood by while the Son suffered so that the prodigal could come home. I am renewed to say, “I do believe that God can make something good come out of the worse circumstance imaginable. I will find my security in Him and not in the things around me. I will see the good that comes from God in spite of the evil that man has devised.” I have come to realize that every glimpse of grace really just nods toward the cross. The point where human suffering intersected with God’s love, and they have never since parted ways. May your life and mine be lived in the shadow of the cross.
